Warren Buffett has long been bullish on China, and its market. But, given the nation’s recent stock market tumbles, would he still be now?

Chinese stocks have been on a roller-coaster ride lately. Shares on China’s Shanghai exchange dropped roughly 10% on Monday and Tuesday. That comes after a 14% rebound since its 25% plunge in June and early July.

But volatility has never scared away Buffett. The billionaire investor and CEO of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway brk.a often says that Wall Street incorrectly equates volatility with risk. If you plan on holding a stock for the long term, Buffett says, it doesn’t matter what it does along the way. The price of a stock will eventually reflect its true value, which is hopefully higher than what you paid to buy the shares.

What Buffett is really concerned about is not overpaying in the first place. About a decade-and-a-half ago, Buffett divulged what he said was his favorite metric for determining whether the stock market was overvalued or undervalued. He wrote about it for the first time in an article in Fortune in 1999. (And here’s an update.) Buffett said he likes to compare the total value of the stock market to the output of the economy, or GDP. It’s like a price-to-earnings ratio but for the economy instead of just one stock. Buffett said he likes to buy when stocks are trading at 70%-to-80% of economic output. Anything over 133% begins to look expensive.

By Stacy Jones

So, what does Buffett’s favorite market indicator say about Chinese stocks right now? It offers a surprisingly positive message, especially compared to what it is saying right now about the U.S. After China’s recent market drop, the total value of all Chinese stocks (I added up the value of shares on China’s two main exchanges, the Shanghai and the Shenzhen, as well as the Hong Kong’s Hang Seng market, where many mainland Chinese companies have long traded) to China’s GDP (plus Hong Kong’s) is 110%.

Many commentators have suggested that China’s market 140% rise in just a year-and-a-half (before the recent correction) was a bubble. But back in early 2014, China’s stock market was actually very cheap. At the end of March 2014, China’s total market value was just 69% of GDP. (That’s the lowest point for China in the chart above.) That’s below the territory that Buffett, who is known as a value investor, would usually says it’s time to buy.

China’s stock market value is higher now, but, the Buffett indicator suggests, perhaps not too high. The U.S. stock market trades at a value of 125% of America’s GDP. That means Chinese stocks are, at least relative to the U.S., a good buy.

There are, of course, some caveats. First of all, just because China’s stock market is cheaper than the U.S. stock market doesn’t mean Chinese shares are undervalued. Many people think the U.S. stock market is overvalued because the nation’s economic growth has been middling. China is growing fast, but it’s slowing. All of that comes into play when you are valuing a stock market.

Investors place a premium on reliability. Unlike Buffett, most investors actually don’t like volatility. So the U.S. stock market tends to trade above its GDP. Over the past five years, the U.S. stock market has traded at nearly 110% of GDP. China has traded at just over 90% of GDP. Go back even further, and it’s likely that China’s market has averaged much lower than that. So, compared to China’s market, America’s market always looks expensive.

Still, the Buffett indicator suggests that the people saying China’s stock market is still way overvalued are wrong. And Buffett’s favorite indicator matches up nicely to what he said about China back in May at Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting, when the market was higher.

The investor predicted the Chinese stock market had another two to three years to run because the country’s population had “found a way to unlock their potential.” He made those comment right around when China’s stocks hit their all time high. They started to tumble about a month later. But none of this is likely to bother Buffett.

This is the most valuable bank in the world

Forget those flashy big-name banks that always snag headlines. The title for world’s most valuable bank goes to Wells Fargo & Co.

The San Francisco-based bank recently zoomed past Industrial & Commercial Bank of China as the bank with the largest market value worldwide, reported the Wall Street Journal. Wells Fargo WFC is worth $301.6 billion. That’s $40 billion more than J.P. Morgan Chase JPM and almost $120 more than Citigroup C.

As China’s stock market struggles and the relative strength of the U.S. economy continues to grow, it’s been a boon to American banks like Wells Fargo. ICBC and Wells Fargo have continually battled for the global top spot, and Wells Fargo first passed it in value in 2013. But, Chinese banks are facing new growth obstacles as the economy inches along, slowing down their expansion significantly from long-running double-digit growth. ICBC shares have fallen about 19% in the past three months, the WSJ reported.

Wells Fargo’s stock has gained 12.4% so far this year, making it the seventh-largest stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. However, when it comes to the largest U.S. bank by assets, that title is still held by J.P. Morgan.

Wells Fargo’s booming market value is a credit to its relatively simple style of business. It doesn’t rely on subprime loans, complex derivatives or risky trades funded by borrowed money. Instead, it focuses on its core units like consumer lending, banking services and mortgage origination. That straight-forward approach may be why Warren Buffett has long been the bank’s largest shareholder (and one of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies).

The poor results, along with a bad report from aerospace company United Technologies , sent ripples across Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 181 points, or 1%, to 17,919.

Even Warren Buffett felt the pain of IBM’s earnings report. Buffet is IBM’s largest shareholder, and his Berkshire Hathaway brk.a conglomerate owns 79.57 million shares of IBM, reports CNBC. With IBM’s shares falling, Buffet lost about $700 million.

Several analysts have chimed in on IBM’s latest earnings as well.

Wells Fargo analysts issued a report on Tuesday saying that while IBM’s recent quarter showed that the company is improving in areas like its cloud computing and data analytics business (which IBM describes as a “strategic imperatives” along with security and mobile). But those new pushes have not yet boosted its bottom line.

“The legacy business continues to weigh on IBM and the tipping point where the strategic initiatives growth drives greater profits than the declines in the legacy business profits has not occurred,” the report said.

UBS analysts also weighed in on the earnings by saying that the good news is that IBM’s free cash flow appears to be stabilizing. However, “The bad news is that software and services, the two key businesses, are seeing revenue and margin pressure,” the UBS report said.

It’s clear investors are getting antsy as they wait for the investments IBM has recently made to pay off. These investments include the company’s push to make IBM Watson technology the king of data crunching technology as well as acquisitions of cloud computing startups.

IBM still doesn’t break out the financial details of its cloud business beyond saying its revenue increased 70% in the most recent quarter. It also said sales for data analytics grew 20%. We’ll have to wait to see until the next earnings report whether the company gives more specifics.

Regarding the way the IBM breaks down its cloud business, an IBM spokesperson sent Fortune the following email:

We talk about our Cloud in two aspects, Total Cloud and as a service Cloud. The as a service metric includes when we are providing our clients with their Cloud services as a service. This would include our infrastructure as a service offerings, such as SoftLayer and Cloud Managed Services (CMS), as well as our BlueMix Platform as a Service, and all of our as-a-service offerings aligned to areas such as analytics as a service, data as a service, process as a service, for example.

In addition, IBM provides a number of offerings to help client design, build, and run their own private Clouds, which would include Cloud consulting, the hardware and software to build their own private cloud, as well as the implementation and migration services to get it up and running. This collection of private Cloud offerings is the difference between what we offer as a service and the Total Cloud result.

Warren Buffett’s auto investment in China just took a huge hit

The Oracle from Omaha has an investment in China that’s currently not doing so hot.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A owns a 10% stake in electric automaker BYD, which is down by around 28% on Friday. At its lowest point, shares were down as much as 40%. The company had a market cap of $118 billion as of mid-June.

At the end of June, meanwhile, a global market sell-off hit the Chinese stock market hard overall. While BYD was down 40% at the time, train maker CRRC Corporation was down 50%, while China Railway shares fell by 45%.

Despite the news, BYD recently announced an expansion into Australia. This comes just a month after it started selling energy-storage units in Germany, according to Bloomberg. BYD, which is based in Shenzhen, China, boasts selling over 100 storage systems in Australia, which it considers a “strategic market.” The company also plans to raise over $2.4 billion to expand its battery input, according to information from the Bloomberg terminal.

This isn’t the first time BYD’s shares plunged so precipitously either. Shares also tanked by 40% in December for reasons unknown.

In other Buffett news, regulators have fined his RV maker Forest River at least $5 million over safety concerns. BYD has historically been one of Buffett’s six greatest investments of all time based on returns. Check out this Fortune feature for the others.

Warren Buffett’s RV maker fined $5 million over safety issues

Warren Buffett’s RV maker, Forest River, has been fined at least $5 million due to safety issues.

The Associated Press reported that the Indiana-based company is on probation and could see regulators fine it an additional $30 million during the next three years, if any other safety concerns crop up.

The Transportation Department said that Forest River failed to report required data on time and also did not issue a recall quickly when problems were found in 1,000 of its camper trailers, the publication reported.

“Safety is a critical shared responsibility, and when manufacturers fail to meet their responsibility, the Department will enforce the law,” according to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

Forest River, however, is reportedly working with the government to fix the issues and it is working on guidelines for the RV industry to use at large.

You can meet any rich, powerful person you want — here’s how I did it

Getting There has, thankfully, been well received and people are incredibly interested in what my subjects have to say — but, by far, the most common question I get is: How did you manage to land these people??!!

Well, it wasn’t quick or easy, but laid out below are all my networking techniques — a blueprint you can use for landing your own “impossible” connections, whether they be potential employers, investors, customers, or some other great get.

First, understand the lay of the land:
Most luminaries are extremely busy. They receive multiple requests every day for interviews, speaking engagements, new business opportunities, charity functions, you name it, not to mention the obligations they have with their careers, families, and personal lives. Understandably, there are simply not enough hours in the day for them to say yes to everything. And they definitely don’t.

If you are not a big name or don’t have something major to offer, accept that you will not be at the top of anyone’s priority list — no matter how important your request might seem to you.

Next, toss your ego out the window.
You will be ignored and rejected a lot, and you can’t take it personally or allow it to depress or discourage you.

Know that you can lead a horse to water, but the biggest hurdle is making sure the horse knows that the water is in front of its face.
You must get your request noticed by the decision maker.

If you have any connection at all, use it.
Your connection doesn’t need to be a big one.

Here’s how I contacted Leslie Moonves, President and CEO of CBS: My best friend’s husband had a friend who used to work at CBS and was willing to put me in touch with Moonves’s assistant. The assistant, who works closely with him every day, made sure he saw my request.

If you don’t have a connection (and most often I didn’t), here are some ways to get your request noticed:

Make yourself as human as possible — the less human you appear, the easier it is for someone to reject you.
Asking in person is the best method; that way it’s obvious you’re human. (It’s a lot easier to say no to a faceless email or tweet.) If you can figure out a way to run into your target in a not stalkerish way, try to do so — for example at a party or event. But don’t be annoying or take up too much of your target’s time. I usually introduce myself, give a one or two sentence pitch, and then ask whom I should contact with more details. The luminary usually gives me the name of a point person; then I contact that person ASAP.

Example: I had sent several requests to the artist Jeff Koons’ office with no response. I then happened to see Koons at an art event in NYC. I went right up to him, told him about my book and that I had already contacted his office to no avail — so I needed to know exactly who to reach out to. Koons gave me a name and the next morning I wrote to that person with something like, “Jeff and I met last night. We briefly discussed his participation in my upcoming book and he told me to contact you with the details.”

I got the chef Daniel Boulud and Warren Buffett to participate in a similar way. Check out this article for a detailed account of how I asked Buffett.

If you can’t ask in person — and most times you can’t — try to connect to the person you can reach (your target’s publicist, assistant, etc.).
Always use the name of the person you are corresponding with since it makes for a more personal connection. If you don’t have that person’s name, ask for it. An email to a specific person instead of one addressed “to whom it may concern” is a bit harder for the recipient to ignore.

Here’s how I got Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus to participate: I once had lunch with a woman who is a friend of Yunus’s daughter. She tried to contact his office on my behalf to make the introduction but was ignored. When I checked in with her to come up with a Plan B, she told me Yunus happened to be in town giving a speech at a hotel. I lurked in the lobby until he was done, made my pitch while following him out to get a taxi, and snapped his photo in case he eventually agreed to participate in Getting There (after all, he lives in Bangladesh.) I then pursued him for over a year and a half to get a phone interview — all the while bouncing among about five different assistants at two different offices. I know all those assistants’ names and they got to know mine.

Never accept “no” from someone who can’t give you a “yes.”
My friend (Steve Cohen!) told me this early on, and it really stuck with me. The point is, don’t let a “no” from one employee deter you. If the front door is locked, try the back door; if the back door is locked, try the side door; if the side door is locked, try crawling in a window. If you can’t do that, wait a while then try the front door again. Someone might answer this time!

What does this front door/side door/window bit really mean? I am talking about ways in — avenues — like a publicist, an agent, an employee, someone who once did business with the person, a friend of a friend of a friend….

I rarely dealt with just one employee and one door. When someone ignored me repeatedly or rejected me, I switched to someone else and acted like nothing had ever happened — I never mentioned I was previously ignored or rejected. (A lot of times your target never even saw your request — an employee rejected it instead.)

Take responses literally.
If you don’t get a definitive “no” from someone, try again. For example, if you get an, “Unfortunately, he can’t participate in that now,” take “now” literally and follow up later.

Never be anything but friendly and pleasant to deal with.
No one reacts well to “attitude” from strangers. That kind of behavior will only get you ignored even more — or axed for good. (It may also earn you a bad reputation.)

If you do get what you consider to be a final rejection, lose graciously and thank the person for considering your request.

Never rub anyone’s nose in the fact that they’re ignoring you.
For example, don’t complain that you called five times already. If you send a follow-up email to someone that has been ignoring you, don’t forward the old email. Send a new email (or send your prior email) like it has never been sent before.

This allows your contact to save face if they do choose to respond — and lets that person respond without having to make any excuses for why they previously ignored you.

Keep your correspondence simple and clear.
Get to your point quickly. Remember how busy everyone is; no one has time to sift through paragraphs to figure out what your email is about.

Once you get a response from someone, grab hold of that person and don’t let go.
I learned this lesson the summer of 1993, when I worked as a real estate broker. When clients decided they wanted to rent an apartment I had just shown them, I was instructed to not to let them out of my sight until they put down a deposit. Why? Simple: if I let them walk away and “get back to me tomorrow,” they might reconsider their decision. So I literally accompanied my clients to the bank while they took out cash for their deposit. The same is true with networking. If someone responds to your request, act fast and respond immediately. You need to get the ball rolling before they forget about you and move on to something else.

Take whatever you can get as soon as you can get it.
That means accepting the very first day the person is available — regardless of your schedule.

Get your foot in the door any way you can.
My interview with Warren Buffett was scheduled for 10 minutes. I traveled from NYC to Omaha for it.

Before we met Warren said he didn’t want me to take his photo. I told him I needed to take it but assured him it wouldn’t cut into my allotted time with him, joking by email, “… even if it ends up being a photo of you running away from me.”

In the end, I took Warren’s photo as soon as I walked in his office door and our interview actually lasted for about an hour. Check his entire essay out here.

One of the most challenging Getting There subjects for me to land was the architect Frank Gehry. I sent a couple of blind requests to the email address listed on his company’s website. The good news is that I was not totally ignored; the bad news is that I was rejected both times.

A few months later I found out my friend’s father’s new girlfriend (read that relationship twice and realize any connection can be a good connection) knew Frank and was willing to pass along my request. She sent him my request twice and was totally ignored both times!

A few months later I figured I would try again (after all, emails are free, and ya never know!), so I sent yet another email to his company’s email address and a miracle happened — I got a response! I can only assume a new assistant was on duty that day.

I immediately emailed her back, got her name, and asked if I could send her some samples of my work to show Gehry. Again, strike while the iron is hot: I was away at the time so I had my cat sitter overnight the material to her.

I called the office to follow up and make sure that she got it; remember, speaking on the phone makes the connection more personal. She showed my material to Gehry, he said yes, and we set up an appointment!

But that’s not the end of the story. Gehry then proceeded to cancel on me for a full year (I was that low on his priority list). During that time I bounced between 4 of his assistants (it seemed like every time I called to follow up a new person needed to be filled in on who I was and what Gehry had agreed to), but I eventually got some time with him and he is now in Getting There!

By the way: when I finally met with Gehry,Fra he had absolutely no idea I had ever been hounding him or his office. (In fact, none of my subjects did.)

Persistence pays off.
If I learned one lesson from the people who I interviewed for Getting There it is that determination and resilience eventually pay off. Of all my subjects, I think that Ian Schrager sums up this sentiment best in his Getting There essay. He says, “In the end, there’s so little that separates people. Those who want success the most and are relentless about pursuing it are the ones who get it.”

Pursuing any goal is much easier if you are truly passionate about what you want; that’s what gives you the fuel to persevere. In my case, I really believed in the concept of my book and felt that readers would truly benefit from what my subjects could share. I also felt sure my subjects would be happy with the finished product; if I hadn’t felt that way it would have been extremely difficult to overcome all the rejection and keep approaching people over and over again.

Warren Buffett donates $2.8 billion … again

The Berkshire Hathaway CEO on Monday donated $2.8 billion to five foundations as a part of his annual pledge.

Around 20.6 billion shares of Berkshire Hathaway class B stock will be donated to the Bill and Melinda Gates, Susan Thompson Buffett, Sherwood, Howard G. Buffett and NoVo Foundations, the company announced in a statement.

It marks Buffett’s tenth annual gift to charities. Last year, Buffett set a personal philanthropy record when he donated an equivalent $2.8 billion.

Buffett’s donation follows the recent headline-making news by Alwaleed bin Talal. The Saudi Prince said he plans to give away his entire fortune worth $32 billion to philanthropic causes over the next few years.

Kraft Heinz begins trading as merged company

Kraft Heinz, the newly merged food behemoth joined under the direction of Warren Buffett and investment firm 3G Capital, kicked off trading on the public markets with a small gain on Monday.

Shares of the company, which trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol KHC, were up a little over 3.5% in recent trading. The stock was rising as the broader market posted declines today.

The debut of Kraft Heinz comes several days after the merger between the companies, which was initially announced in March, was officially completed. The deal created the third-largest food and beverage company in North America, only trailing PepsiCo and Nestle USA. It unites Kraft’s namesake cheese, Jell-O and Planters peanuts with Heinz’s ketchup and Classico sauces. The company’s immediate focus is to integrate the two businesses.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns about 325 million shares in Kraft Heinz after investing about $9.5 billion, Bloomberg reported. It is Buffett’s second-largest stock investment, behind his stake in Wells Fargo.

What’s ahead for Kraft Heinz? Likely some big changes. The company already announced a ton of executive management changes last week. And as Fortune has previously reported, early success may be judged on just how much costs can be cut at Kraft, no so much on sales trends. Heinz, which was previously acquired by 3G and Buffett, already has made headlines for slashing jobs, closing plants and reducing headquarters to trim expenses.

The deal has an equity value of $3.44 billion, according to Thomson Reuters calculations. The companies said they expect the deal to close in the third quarter of 2015.

“Integrating our platforms will be a big step forward in our shared vision of providing open, cost-effective and efficient solutions for dealers, lenders, manufacturers and consumers,” Cox President Sandy Schwartz said in a statement.

Privately held Cox, the automotive arm of media company Cox Enterprises, said it would fund the acquisition through a new $1.85 billion loan arranged by Citigroup Global Markets, a $750 million equity investment from BDT Capital Partners and existing credit facility.

Why Google would want to back a huge wind farm in Africa

After investing close to $2 billion into solar and wind farms, mostly across the U.S., Google may now be taking that strategy to Africa. Google is in discussions to invest potentially tens of millions of dollars into the largest wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report in CNBC,

It wouldn’t be Google’s first investment in clean energy on the continent. In 2013, the web giant backed a large, 96 megawatt, solar panel farm that is now operating in South Africa.

But this latest wind farm will be massive. Called The Lake Turkana Wind Power Project, the wind farm is under construction across 40,000 acres in Kenya between Lake Turkana and the South Horr Township.

The remote, desolate area — described as looking “like the surface of the moon” by a developer — is supposed to have some of the strongest winds in the world. An idea to build a wind farm there has been discussed for decades.

While the wind farm development has faced a series of hurdles in recent years, the farm is supposed to be completed in 2017 and deliver 300 megawatts to the Kenyan grid. That amount of electricity represents 20 percent of all the electricity produced in the country.

Despite a rapidly developing economy in Kenya, widespread use of cell phones, and the home to one of the most successful mobile payment systems in the world, more than three quarters of Kenyans don’t have regular access to electricity. The country needs both more grid-tied power generation, like this wind farm, as well as off-grid power generation like home solar panels.

The wind farm is expected to cost close to $1 billion, and is being billed as the largest private investment in Kenyan history. Committed funders include the African Development Bank (Africa’s equivalent of the World Bank), the European Union’s European Investment Bank, the development agencies of Finland and other organizations from European countries.

And now perhaps Google. But why would the web giant want to do this?

The early construction of the Lake Turkana Wind Farm in Kenya.Image courtesy of The Lake Turkana Wind Power Project (LTWP) consortium

Google has become increasingly interested in investing in, and buying power from, clean energy projects. Google has ponied up close to $2 billion in more than 20 clean energy projects, and has committed to buy another 1 gigawatt worth of clean energy from various farms.

When Google invests in the construction of a solar or wind farm, it works with other investors and offers project financing to the developer. In this way Google can use its large balance sheet to make these investments and make a decent return on the money over time.

For example, Google is an investor in one of the world’s largest wind farms with General Electric in Oregon, and in a large solar thermal farm outside of Las Vegas. This is likely the way that Google would invest in the Kenyan wind farm.

So yes, solar and wind farm backers usually make money. It’s a big and growing international business with traditional investors like Warren Buffett. Clean energy development has in recent years become much cheaper and more competitive with fossil fuel power, particularly large wind and solar panel farms.

Clean energy development is also a growing business in Africa, despite some of the limitations. The International Energy Agency says clean energy could deliver half of the growth of power generation in sub-Saharan Africa by 2040. Big private equity groups like Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group are investing in power generation on the continent.

The other main way that Google works with clean power is that it can commit to buying clean energy from a project once it’s completed. Often when it does this it’s because some of its data center infrastructure is in the same region as the clean energy farm.

Whichever model Google chooses, a big part of its motivation is its power-hungry data centers. Google both wants to make these energy sources cleaner, but it also wants more control over, and flexibility with, the energy options for its infrastructure.

In addition, Google is a well-known consumer-facing brand, and wants to maintain a good image. It also uses its environmentally-focused initiatives as a way to be a “mission-driven” organization and recruit and keep its employees.

Residents transfer money using the M-Pesa banking service at a store in Nairobi, Kenya in April 2013.Photograph by Trevor Snapp — Bloomberg/Getty Images

But why Africa? Google has been interested in Kenya and greater Africa for awhile, and has offices across the continent. As many developed countries have brought almost their entire populations online, Google is keen to help connect the future of its Internet users who lack access to the Internet. The major resource that drives an Internet connection is an energy source.

This strategy informed Google’s Loon idea, which uses solar-powered balloons to create a floating Internet for off-grid Internet users. And it also leads into Google’s interest in energy in Africa, like this potential wind farm deal and its investment in the South African solar panel farm.

At an event earlier this year, Google’s vice president of energy John Woolard said that his “whole team is looking at the developing world and the 1.3 billion who don’t have access to electricity.” These are future Google customers and they need energy to access Google.

Woolard also noted at that event that when it comes to Google investing in clean energy projects, it can be “fairly forward leaning and take on some risk.” Some clean energy projects are riskier than others given the geography, partners and technology. Because Google isn’t a traditional energy investor, and has so much money, it can act a little differently and back riskier projects.

That applies to the Kenyan wind farm. At times the region has been under turmoil, and the project has faced a lot of issues as it’s been developed. One of it’s biggest needs right now is, not surprisingly, funding.

In that way, Google could also act as a lever for U.S. funding for the Lake Turkana wind farm. According to the report, Google’s investment could also help unlock a $250 million investment guarantee from the U.S. government’s development finance institution. President Obama has been encouraging U.S. investors to support 10 gigawatts of new energy for sub-Saharan Africa, but the U.S. funds can only be used if U.S. private investors are actively involved.